TORONTO — Leading international environmental organizations coordinated efforts today at more than 350 protests and events across the United States and Canada, calling on companies to end the destruction of North America’s largest ancient forest, the Boreal. Outside the Toronto legislator, activists unfurled a giant banner reading “Save the Boreal Forest” - highlighting the Canadian government’s role in Boreal forest protection. As part of an International Day of Action to raise awareness about threats to the Boreal, the groups demanded that companies such as Kimberly-Clark, Victoria’s Secret and Xerox-paper supplier Weyerhaeuser stop using paper that comes from trees in the Boreal in their tissue products, catalogs, and copy paper and instead, use more recycled and tree-free paper. In addition, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and Toronto-Dominion Bank Financial Group were called on to stop funding destruction and develop permanent policies that protect endangered forests like the Boreal, prevent climate change and promote human rights.

Protests and events were held in cities as diverse as Birmingham, Edmonton, Alberta, Halifax, Las Vegas, Seattle, Toronto, Ontario, Tulsa and Vancouver. In suburban Atlanta, activists protested outside of Kimberly-Clark’s operations headquarters, where the company’s vice president of environment and energy works. In New York City, Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping preached outside the Victoria’s Secret in Herald Square and performed a skit involving “saving” a fallen Victoria’s Secret angel. In Toronto hundreds of people including First Nations chiefs, consumer activists, Raging Grannies and people dressed as homeless caribou marched from Bay Street to the legislature past Canada’s five largest banks to demand that all parties assume responsibility for protecting the Boreal.

About The Boreal Forest
Roughly 13 times the size of California, the Boreal stretches across North America from Alaska to the Atlantic Ocean, forming part of a “green halo” of forest that encircles the Earth just below the Arctic tundra. The Boreal comprises 25 percent of the planet’s remaining ancient forest and is considered as important to global environmental security as the Amazon. Some of the Boreal’s key environmental services include regulating global climate, cleaning the air, purifying water and serving as a lifebank in a time of unprecedented extinction. The boreal forests are the largest storehouse of carbon in the world. They store nearly twice as much carbon as tropical rain forests. Less than eight percent of the Boreal is protected, and approximately half has been designated for resource extraction by the Canadian government. The United States is the largest consumer of wood products from the Boreal, which is logged mostly to provide fiber for throwaway items such as junk mail catalogs, facial tissue, toilet paper, copy paper, magazines and newspapers.

About Xerox and Weyerhaeuser: Bad Practice in the Boreal
Xerox, one of the world’s largest paper companies, buys directly from legally contested Weyerhaeuser logging operations and mills in Northwest Ontario and Saskatchewan in the Boreal. Xerox is being asked to honor its “obligation to ensure responsible management of forests that provide raw materials for the production of paper,” and stop purchasing from Weyerhaeuser until the company attains FSC certification and adopts a global policy to protect endangered forests and respect Native rights.

About Banks and the Boreal
Canada’s five leading banks are being asked to move quickly to phase out funding of industrial extraction from intact forests and endangered ecosystems; set greenhouse gas reduction targets and timelines for direct and indirect emissions; support the right of indigenous First Nations and local communities to free and informed prior consent of bank financed projects on their lands; require independent chain-of-custody certification for forest products financing to prevent illegal logging and corporate corruption; prioritize funding for sustainable forestry certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and clean energy sources such as wind and solar; implement internal paper procurement policies that maximize post-consumer recycled content and FSC-certified virgin fiber; and eliminate procurement of products from endangered forests and controversial suppliers.

Supporting Statements
“The Boreal is irreplaceable, not disposable,” said Brant Olson of Rainforest Action Network. “The Boreal is one of the last great forests on Earth that has not been completely ravaged by unsustainable industrial resource extraction. We will continue to support indigenous communities in their struggle to protect these ancient forests on their ancestral homelands from being turned into disposable paper products by U.S. companies like Xerox.”

“While leading U.S. and European banks have adopted comprehensive biodiversity and climate safeguard policies, Canada’s top banks are lagging way behind,” says Bill Barclay, global finance campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network. “Canada’s biggest banks — RBC, TD, BMO, Scotiabank and CIBC — need to sober up and adopt benchmark biodiversity and climate protection policies covering all their investments. Reckless investing that fuels global warming and destroys Endangered Forests is no longer acceptable banking behavior in Canada or for the rest of the world. We hope to see a leader emerge from the Canadian banking industry and initiate positive movement towards new comprehensive safeguard policies by the end the year.”